Beamer wrote on Jun 23, 2014, 18:35:The NHL playoffs had plenty of players writhing on the ground for no reason.

I watched all or part of every series in the playoffs and don't recall ever seeing someone writhing around on the ground, faking it or otherwise. Guys try to get calls with questionable hits and definitely embellish them, but outright flopping is too costly for the team in hockey and almost never happens.

nin wrote on Jun 20, 2014, 17:55:What that guy said. There are bots for some functions, but not all. You still end up needing to be online and find other (human) players.

It doesn't really make sense, either. They have a beta private mode in game that requires at least one other human player, so the mode is more or less there. Everything already has an AI routine already to work more or less by itself, too; your titan will use AI mode if you aren't in it, there are loads of NPC's fighting anyway, but the option isn't there to just play without other people.

I'd play the shit out of it if it had a bot mode, but still will probably find myself going back to CS:GO instead just because of that even though I like Titanfall better gameplay-wise.

nin wrote on Jun 20, 2014, 11:04:Yeah, I would have jumped the fuck all over this if there was SP and more (not partial) bot support.

I picked it up a week or so ago when they had the sale, and was surprised that I like it as much as I do... but I haven't been able to complete the campaign because of lack of players, and the other night it took me 10-15 minutes to finally get into a game before I could play because there wasn't enough people playing.

It's a great game, but without an offline mode/bots it's almost impossible to recommend since even this close to release there's not enough players to make it possible to play the way you'd want to. Maybe this free thing will fix that, but I doubt it since the game is a completely insane 50gb download.

I haven't played in a while, but it's not a bad game...just not a whole lot to it. When I quit playing, you could more or less run through the available content in about 5-10 hours depending on how fast you move and it's just sort of grinding around doing random events from there.

The show is ok, I guess. It has too many characters, with only a couple being interesting; it's good when they're involved, and bad when it switches away from them. With a little luck it's improved for the new season by cutting some of its problem areas and focusing on the good parts. It sucks a lot that something like Almost Human gets axed while this stays around, but it's still semi-watchable sci-fi. I think the first season is free on Amazon Prime right now, maybe Netflix but I haven't checked...it's ok if you go in expecting a Syfy show.

Verno wrote on Jun 19, 2014, 15:01:It's early access still. I'm waiting til it comes out, I swore off all early access and Kickstarter stuff no matter the pedigree of the devs. Hopefully it'll be great as expected but I don't mind waiting and paying an extra little bit of money.

Go ahead and grab it, this was from the email they sent to backers today:

Hello everybody!

Extremely busy times here at Larian as we're getting ready for release on June 30th so we'll keep it short.

It's worth saving a few dollars now even if you're waiting for release since the release date is the last day of the sale anyway.

Beamer wrote on Jun 18, 2014, 16:40:And, with video games, no one gives a shit that Batman is a dude, despite you repeatedly saying it. What people care about is that video games star, almost exclusively, straight white males. Non-straight, non-white or non-males tend to be minor roles, often underclothed and in distress.

Hollywood isn't like this. The Hunger Games is about a strong female who's clothed. Even comic book movies now - Natalie Portman is Thor's clothed love interest. Scarlett Johansson is Captain America's clothed partner who saves his ass. In video games? No. This doesn't happen often. People don't care much that many video games are trite, whitewashed male bullshit. People care that it's almost exclusive.

Video games star almost exclusively white males because that's what sells. That's the market; frankly, if anybody tries to do anything different they can't win. Lara Croft was remade into a character who, in the latest game, could easily have been male and people *still* bitch because she's attractive so therefore not male enough to not be sexist.

As far as Hollywood not doing the same thing, that's utter horseshit. Just completely untrue. There are no comic books movies with female leads that Hollywood's taken a serious shot at despite the popularity of the characters in comics. Johannsen's Black Widow fits the same minor character stereotype that you just slammed games for, she's almost completely unnecessary in the movie.

And the Hunger Games turns into a damsel story by the 3rd book where she becomes a prize between her two love interests. Sorry to burst the bubble for you, if you haven't read it.

There are umpteen examples of characters that don't fit your minor role, damsel in distress, unclothed stereotype but instead with all this Sarkeesian shit THIS is the kind of discussion we have. It's idiotic, it's not actually factual, and it really serves no purpose whatsoever.

Like always, she's going to find everything bad that she's looking for because that's exactly what she set out to find. Gaming journalism isn't any better than the big news sites reporting political stories these days in that they take complex issues and then break them down into sound bites, and treat those stories as simple black and white issues.

It sounds good if you're an activist but doesn't do shit to actually fix anything, and actually discourages any real discussion since it ignores the bigger picture in favor of making a point.

As for playing video games with friends rather than strangers, that'd be fun but it's not usually realistic. My kids play, my wife plays, but we all play different things in different ways and at different paces. Any number of factors makes it harder than it used to be, from lack of LAN game modes to cost involved to there just not being that many games that do this or do it well anymore outside of rehashes of the same games we played on the couch in the 90's.

HorrorScope wrote on Jun 17, 2014, 17:12:I'll go with this simple reason why it can work. I think a lot of players like to be immersed into their game. If this can help that as much as many think it can, well gameplay has just been enhanced.

In order for that to happen there needs to be a "killer app" that sells people on the technology; it gets to be problematic on a console because in order for that app to get made it generally has to be appeal to a broader audience than it might need to on a PC with something like the Oculus Rift.

There's nothing really wrong with the Kinect, either, but there's a reason why they're shipping XB1's without it now. There's no killer app for the device, and nobody is making one because there's not enough of a market for it with those systems. I'd be surprised if Sony doesn't run into the same roadblocks.

creatorswhim wrote on Jun 16, 2014, 18:35:I think he knows better than to post things on random news websites nowadays. At least I hope so.

He used to post on GoneGold way back when that was around, and as often as he'd get shit (sometimes deserved, like any of us I guess) he usually had something interesting to say. Same when he posted here, but he always got a posting assault trying to get a rise out of him everywhere he went.

Sometimes you just shook your head at the posts, but I always kind of liked him.

Creston wrote on Jun 12, 2014, 22:46:Most of the things you've backed have probably raked in a lot more money than they originally asked for/thought they were going to have, right? All this extra stuff takes time to develop and implement.

It doesn't take rocket surgery to see that if Wasteland 2 was going to take longer to develop, that Torment would get pushed back as well on virtually a 1:1 scale, since the entire Wasteland 2 team is needed to actually make Torment.

I have no issues with this whatsoever. They are clear and upfront about these delays, they have logical reasons for delaying, and in the end it leads to a better game.

I'm sure that's the case, anything I've seen get funded at all has well exceeded their stated goals.

I don't think that's much of an excuse, though. When you're tacking on stretch goals repeatedly and extending what's necessary to get the project out the door then you need to give a realistic measurement of an expected release date. It's not that I expect everything to always meet that date or else, but more than a few projects aren't even landing within a year of what they originally stated; an arena-battle minis game I funded projected a release date of around Christmas last year, for example, and I'm still getting emails with pictures of unfinished sculpts for the minis 6 months after they had said they would ship.

I don't see why being clear and upfront about delays is better than not being incredibly wrong about what the original release was supposed to be. If a designer can't accurately guess within a year of their release date I question how they're calculating their budget to pay their people and do everything else during development of their project. The longer the disparity there, the more likely it is that they either fold entirely or cut corners before they can get you what you funded.

Julio wrote on Jun 12, 2014, 21:06:I backed this. No problem with the delay, get the game right.

I don't disagree, but holy damn does it get annoying. I can't think of anything I've backed or even looked at on Kickstarter that actually shipped in the same ballpark as when they said it would during fundraising.

Mashiki Amiketo wrote on Jun 11, 2014, 18:40:The only games that I can think of that did romance right was BG2, and PS:Torment.

KOTOR and Mass Effect did pretty well, I thought (ME much better with some characters that others, obviously). Uncharted does pretty well, but those aren't player decision based; still, it does add something to the game that you don't often get in games.

I think most games don't do it well simply because they either don't attempt it, or because so many games come off like they're written by 12-year old fanfic authors.

Cutter wrote on Jun 11, 2014, 14:43:I'll give you that one. But I haven't seen any other female lead that I've wanted to play. Let's face it, the only reason boys like gals like Lara - bewbs, Bayonetta - shades of dominatrix librarian fantasies, etc.

So you only play male characters because you want to see a dude cut like Channing Tatum shake his money maker on your screen?

Either way you cut that idea it comes out being pretty laughable.

NKD wrote on Jun 11, 2014, 17:52:The problem is that when you're going historical, any time before like the 1960s the character being female is going to have to be a significant element in their experience or you're being historically dishonest. I can see how writers would get tired of having to weave that into the narrative, and they've already done it once in AC: Liberation.

The Assassin's Creed games are about as historical as Ancient Aliens. Sure, they talk about stuff that happens historically, but there's a fairly healthy dose of fantasy inserted there.

shinchan0s wrote on Jun 11, 2014, 10:59:I never buy the "I'd rather look at a girl's ass while I'm playing cuz I'm totally an alpha male" tripe either. Any guy who's that insistent on playing females secretly wants to become one. There's nothing else to it.

I don't get this argument. It seems to me that the only type of person that would make it is either afraid he'll catch the gay if he plays a female character or just so insecure that he thinks that playing a muscled alpha-male badass somehow has some bearing in his real-life self.

I always play female characters given the choice. Why? Because I like them better, since practically every story in the genres I enjoy are dominated by cookie-cutter male protagonists with no defining personality characteristics. Video games are so heavily oriented toward male characters that just having a female protagonist is an interesting design hook that gives some personality to characters and storylines that are often devoid of anything imaginative. Hell, take Watch_Dogs; if you played as Clara, who saw the things happen to Aiden's family and took action instead of playing as just another generic Aiden searching for vengeance that'd be far more interesting than what's actually there.

Or maybe I just need to break it to my wife and kids that I want a sex change. I've always told her I was a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

jdreyer wrote on Jun 10, 2014, 20:15:I'd rather have the Hz than the extra pixels of a 4K monitor.

Same here.

Things don't seem to be changing on the front of needing a pretty ridiculous video card to get a decent experience out of 2560x1440 as it is, either, so pushing a higher resolution does me no good since I'm not about to SLI $500 video cards in order to use one... but I would get use out of an affordable 120hz 1440p monitor.